Solomon said today: “In his responses to Donna Brazile’s book excerpt that appeared in Politico, Perez has pledged to make the DNC evenhanded — yet he has doubled down on defending the indefensible deal that the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign cut with highly unethical joint fundraising arrangements.”

PIA GALLEGOS, pia at gallegoslaw.com
Gallegos is a civil rights lawyer and progressive Democratic Party activist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She wrote the “Democracy and the Party” section of the Autopsy report.

She said today: “Current DNC chair Tom Perez is being disingenuous when he responds to current criticism by saying that the ‘joint fundraising agreements were the same for each campaign except for the treasurer.’ In fact, ‘except for the treasurer’ is a huge exception.”

The Autopsy report explains: “The joint funding agreement provided that the Hillary Victory Fund was to be administered by the Clinton Campaign’s own chief operating officer, Elizabeth Jones, who notably controlled how money was transferred to both the states and the DNC. Jones had the ‘sole discretion’ to decide when transfers of money to and from the state parties would occur through the vehicle of a shared account, thereby facilitating the pass-throughs to the Clinton Campaign.”

Gallegos added today: “The way it was structured enabled Clinton to lock in the superdelegate support months before any vote was cast in the caucuses or the primaries and helped funnel millions of dollars early to the Clinton campaign.”